My twins are starting high school. Just like many parents, I look at them and think, “How did that happen? We were just removing all of the breakable, potentially mouth-size objects below 3-feet high in our house like yesterday.”

Vonnegut said it best: “So it goes.”

This summer, after literally a year of twin-based planning, they moved into separate rooms. My wife and I struck a hard bargain with them: Clean out the playroom first. Our plan was to move the things in the extra room, the one that Abby would get, to the basement level playroom. In the way was a decade of forgotten toys, stuffed animals, Popsicle stick and tape contraptions, and ...

Books. Lots of books. Books that I read to them over and over. Books that they read over and over. Most were in very good condition. Even the most consulted reference book of their young lives was in good condition, “The Pokemon Platinum Version: The Official Pokemon Guide,” featuring a whopping 624 pages of Pokemon bios. (I was lectured, in depth, on the pros and cons of every single Pokemon, I think.)

All of these pristine relics of childhood past, however, could not stay in the playroom. Choices were made, piles and piles of books materialized, and then they asked me to haul them all away. I took them to the library.

As good as those books might have been, all of them could not become part of the library’s collection. We do, fortunately, have contingency plans for donated books. Many of that bunch became “honor” books. “Honor” books don’t circulate like a normal library book. Patrons bring in a personal book (or not), take one of our “honor” books, and then bring the “honor” book back when they’re done. Some people use them for vacation books as they are, in a sense, expendable and don’t have a due date.

Others in my twins’ collection became “giveaway” books. The library hands them out at festivals and events. We gave away crates full of them at our Jolly Thursday events down at A.J. Jolly Park this past summer. It’s fun to watch the kids sort through them and pick out just the right title.

The last of the twins’ collection went to the Friends. The Friends of the Library sell donated books at their book sales and return that money to the library. For years, the Friends have funded the children’s summer reading program. That’s $18,000 gleaned from donated books, most of which sold for a quarter.

Some of you are, like me, watching your little ones become bigger ones and thinking that you might need to downsize the accumulated historical record. If part of that record is books, books in good shape, we can find a use for them. All books are welcome.